Chapter 5
Alma
“Alma. There’s no record of you,” Detective Johnson says again.
I shake my head, my eyes locked on a bug crawling across the dirty kitchen floor in Nan’s trailer. I thought I’d never have to see Detective Johnson again. They ruled Esteban’s death as revenge by one of the local gangs he’d helped the LAPD infiltrate and bring down months prior to his death.
“Alma?” Detective Johnson says, reminding me of her question.
“But I gave you my driver’s license and my birth certificate.”
“All those documents are false.” My eyes snap to hers before she continues, “We ran your name through every federal and state database. There’s no birth record, no social security number, not even a prenatal doctor visit. As far as the system’s concerned, you don’t exist.”
“That’s impossible. I went to school. I had—” I had nothing.
All the moving, the weird behaviors when I asked Missy about my father, something always felt off.
“Alma, what do you know about Melissa Gutierrez?”
For starters, I know she hated the name Melissa.
She went by Missy, and I knew Missy better than I knew myself.
She was a free-spirited Chicana, trusted her tarot cards, lit patchouli incense in the house, and talked to her plants.
She was wild and often misunderstood by the people around her, but she was my mother.
I know her heart, which is the only thing that falls from my lips.
“My mother loved me.”
Detective Johnson’s eyes soften at the sound of my cracking voice. “I don’t doubt for a second that she didn’t love you, but as you can see, something isn’t adding up here. As far as the system’s concerned, you don’t exist. Love aside, Alma, don’t you want to know why?”
I blink hard, trying to stop the burn igniting behind my eyes. The trailer feels smaller by the second, the walls pressing in as my chest tightens around shallow breaths. I close my eyes for a moment, and when I open them, I’m no longer alone.
Efren is beside me. Shirtless. His arm is heavy around my waist, holding me like this is normal, like this is allowed. My body turns rigid at the sight of him.
No.
What am I doing?
This is wrong.
I ease his arm off me, careful not to wake him, and slip from the bed into the dark hallway. The guilt hits first. Then the fear. I run. Bare feet slapping against the floor, each step racing to keep up with the frantic thumping of my heart.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
My mouth opens but no scream comes out.
Click.
The sound is so soft it almost doesn’t register. Just a subtle metal slide.
Then—
BANG.
My body jolts. I gulp down air like I’m drowning. I’m not in Nan’s kitchen anymore. Not in that dark hallway. Not in that memory. I’m on a couch where my fists are clenched so tightly my nails bite half-moons into my palms.
“Alma,” a soft, feminine voice says. “Welcome back.”
I open my eyes slowly. The light is dim, but I make out my surroundings as my breathing steadies. There’s no Detective Johnson. No Efren or the clicking of a gun. Just the sound of a clock ticking and the gentle hum of the white noise machine by the bookshelf.
“You startled yourself,” Dr. Verduzco says calmly. “Was it the same memory?”
I nod my head, and she jots a note on the large legal pad resting on her lap.
“Tell me what you saw.”
“Detective Johnson. She told me I didn’t exist. That there was no record of me.” I shake my head. “I closed my eyes and woke up in Efren’s bed.”
“Esteban’s brother?”
I nod.
My heart drops at the memory.
The night I sought him out for comfort.
“Why do these two memories keep merging together?” I ask.
Dr. Verduzco examines me thoroughly. She’s never judged me. “There could be many reasons for them merging—a similar emotion or outcome. What are you feeling in those moments?”
“Confusion and shame.”
Afraid.
A small part of me felt afraid.
“And that’s when you get up and start running?” Dr. Verduzco’s brows lift slightly, but her expression stays unreadable.
She approaches my memories with cold logic, never wasting time on comfort. I value that. Again and again, she tears the bandaid away, dragging me closer to the black matter festering in my mind.
Dr. Verduzco studies me as I search for what I felt in the moment.
The memory hovers just beyond my grasp, taunting me, playing on a loop through the last four sessions I’ve had.
My brain dangles scraps of information, mocking me as I try to untangle what’s memory versus what I’ve invented to protect myself.
“How do I know what’s real? How do I tell what’s a memory and what’s made up?”
“You can’t,” Dr. Verduzco responds, her voice steady. “Memories don’t follow logic, Alma. They follow emotion. Memories anchor themselves in fear, guilt, and love. The mind hides what it can’t survive, but it never truly forgets.”
I nod, but something itches under my skin. I feel like I’m agreeing to end the session, just so I can crawl back into the false reality I’ve created for myself.
“Do you think I’ll ever remember everything that happened that night?”
“I think you’re telling me what your subconscious wants me to hear.” She pauses briefly and leans forward. “What you want to hear. And if you keep circling back to this memory, it’s because there’s something there you’re not ready to face. Something you buried to survive.”
When I first started seeing Doctor Verduzco, it was because of memory glitches.
After the first month, she was able to recognize patterns of Dissociative Amnesia, which is trauma induced rather than injury related.
My mind has created a secret place to hide all the trauma and protect myself from the overwhelming pain.
But I need to find out what happened. I need to unlock the vault and see what other memories I’ve failed to process.
“And the brother?” Dr. Verduzco asks. “Have you heard anything else from the brother?”
“No. Not since he wrote me last summer.”
Found You Kitten.
The three words make my skin burn. What kind of psychopath gives their dead brother’s ex-girlfriend a pet name? And I’m not hiding from him.
Detective Johnson had helped me as long as she could to track down my true identity, but dead ends were discouraging. I’d heard from her less and less. Then Nan died, leaving me nothing but a car on empty, her loaded shot gun and a grumpy old tabby cat.
“Alma, I called the Federal Detention Center recently to inquire about Efren’s stay, and it turns out he was released over six months ago,” Dr. Verduzco admits.
“He was?” I ask, thinking back to the face I’d seen in the crowd the other night. Those eyes.
“I need to know if you feel threatened by his release in any way.”
“I don’t know,” I confess, because I don’t know what to feel when I think of Efren.
I can only remember what he said to me that night.
“You woke up, you heard a noise, and then you found him like this. Do you understand me?”
“What about the nightmares about Nan?” Dr. Verduzco asks. “Still none since she died?”
“No, nothing,” I reply.
“Great! That’s progress,” Dr. Verduzco says.
I hate that word.
Progress.
Like trading nightmares about Nan for ones about my ex-boyfriend’s brother is something to celebrate.
_______
After therapy, I head back to the apartment and take a nap. Something furry meows in my face until I’m forced to open my eyes and face him.
“Don Cheetos,” I mumble and pull the orange tabby cat into me. He lets out an annoyed meow. “Amargado. You just want me to feed you, huh?”
He’s a grumpy old cat, but he’d also been Nan’s, so it makes sense he only tolerates me. I stretch out on the bed and reach for my phone. Once I realize it’s barely 9:00 p.m., I settle back into the comfort of my bed.
The champagne room I’m working tonight won’t open until 1:00 a.m., and I’ll be the last to perform around two in the morning. There’s plenty of time to doom scroll.
The wallpaper on my phone makes me smile.
It’s a picture of me and my friends, Thalia and Mireya.
It was taken the last time we were all together at the Calavera Hotels Halloween party.
The last time we felt like the close knit trio we’d been before our lives became chaotic.
At least in their chaos both of them found their soulmates.
A concept I’ve given up on. It’s hard to find love when you don’t even have a basic identity.
I remember that night like it was yesterday.
Mireya was dressed as a very pregnant bride of Frankenstein, and Thalia as the sexiest Harley Quinn I’d ever seen.
I wore my stage costume for the night, but convinced everyone I was a character from a book.
As always, they accepted everything I said as truth.
The sweet and innocent Alma, the girl they knew, would never lie.
But we were all three lying about our lives to some degree.
In the picture, we stand by the rail at the top of the VIP section.
Thalia has a drink in her hand and an arm wrapped around me, our fake smiles aimed at the camera.
That was the first night that unraveled so many secrets that Thalia had been keeping from us, including the fact that Lucia was her daughter.
I could have taken the opportunity to confide in her about my own secrets, but I didn’t.
Something always pulled me back from telling them the truth.
It doesn’t stop me from laughing at the reactions I imagine when they find out I’m a midnight ballerina.
Mireya would for sure die of shock to know she was living with me the whole time, and I’d kept it from her.
Thalia would cheer me on. Hell, she’d probably ask me to give her pole dancing lessons.
But I couldn’t risk telling them about my mother or my lack of identity.
Don Cheetos lets out another aggressive meow, and I respond with a sigh. Before I can get up, I hear the opening chords from the room next door. Larix must be home still. I rise and get Don Cheetos his food. The sound blaring from the closed door becomes familiar as the lyrics play in my head.
I took my love, and I took it down.
Missy’s voice echoes inside me. It was her favorite song and a trustworthy memory. One I hadn’t repressed. We’re in the car, and she’s singing Landslide by Fleetwood Mac.
“This wasn’t the right place for us,” she says.
Fleetwood Mac karaoke became a ritual for us with every move.
Missy would play it on repeat while she chain-smoked Newports, and we drove into a new chapter of our lives.
Swallowing hard, I stare at the closed door where the melody plays, and the song feels like lime in my wounds.
Larix doesn’t know my past, but I hate her all the same for the reminder.
The floor creaks beneath me as I make my way back to my bedroom and search the top shelf of my closet. It takes me a minute, but I find the old keepsake. A shoe box of memories I’ve carried with me through every move. My breath shallows, and my hands tremble lifting the worn lid.
I find the matchbook Missy kept, the one with the Calavera Hotels logo.
The logo has changed since then, but the lettering and address are still the same.
It’s what led me here. I rummage through the items—a keychain from a gas station we’d stopped at that one time the car overheated, a dozen faded polaroids of Missy and me, letters, and other items. My hand settles on what I’m looking for.
I run my hand over the front of the cracked CD. Fleetwood Mac: The Dance. The memory of her singing flashes by, and I smile, remembering the way she sang along in her raspy voice. From inside the box, a faded polaroid stares up at me.
I’m five years old, grinning a gap-toothed smile and holding an ice cream cone.
Missy stands behind me, sun shining through her jet black hair, arms wrapped around me like I’m the only thing she’s ever wanted to hold onto.
My breath catches at the memory. A safe one.
One I can let myself get lost in because we were happy.
Our lives weren’t perfect, but I didn’t care as long as I had her.
I believed that she loved me, and that love was all I ever needed in life.
Memories of Missy always trigger the well of emotions inside of me.
Tears fall silently down my cheek as I remember her.
My brain is cruel about what it’s willing to hide from me.
I’d give anything to forget the way she looked in that hospital bed.
The way the joy had slipped from her face as her life slowly faded.
“You’re more than just my Alma, you’re my Vida.”
Her last words as she cradled my face. Something she always said to me. One of many ways she let me know I was important to her. I clutch the photo to my chest like it’s a rosary. My mouth tastes like salt and copper, like grief and rage married and birthed something I’ll never be able to name.
How could someone who claimed to love me so much lie to me? Why did she rob me of the truth? I loved her. Even in her reckless behaviors, I trusted her. But loving someone shouldn’t hurt this much.
I throw the photo back in the box and slide it as far back as possible. Missy left no paper trail of her motives, just this box and a lifetime of contorted memories. But I will figure out what she was hiding, even if it means losing myself in the process.